


cotton candy, elephants, and circus fun~

by happyrobins



Series: baby!Damian AU [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Baby!Damian AU, Bat Family, Gen, Haly's Circus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 15:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1555637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happyrobins/pseuds/happyrobins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick takes Bruce and baby!Damian to the circus! and their trip doesn’t end as disastrously as it could have :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	cotton candy, elephants, and circus fun~

The ticket line-ups are already long by the time they arrive. The circus grounds are so packed that Bruce has trouble maneuvering Damian’s stroller through the constantly shifting crowd. The air is full of the sounds of music and excited voices, and the scents of sugar and fried foods and sawdust.

Bruce can’t quite imagine what Dick’s childhood must have been like, growing up among all this clamor and colour, under these tents and spotlights, but at the same time he can’t imagine Dick having grown up anywhere else.

The boy is grinning. He breathes in happily, just drinking it all in, and he actually seems to grow a bit from it, like a plant that’s been away from sunlight too long. He walks with that special spring in his step that he only seems to have while wearing Robin colours. 

“Looks like they’ve got an awesome turn-out tonight!” he says proudly, appraising the crowd. “Even Brucie Wayne would have trouble getting tickets. But lucky for you, you’re my special guests.”

He leans down and pokes Damian in the tummy teasingly. The toddler scowls up at him, clearly not having fun yet. He hates the stroller. He prefers to be carried, especially by Bruce. He always enjoys being able to look down on people from his father’s height.

Dick disappears into the crowd, blending into the bustle and noise as well as Bruce blends in with shadows. Bruce spots him again a few seconds later, slipping into the ticket booth. He chats with the woman working there. She tousles his hair fondly and he gives her a kiss on the cheek. When he returns he brandishes three tickets in Bruce’s face.

“Ta-da!” he sings. Bruce raises an eyebrow and Dick pouts. “Don’t give me that  _look_ , B. I reserved these ahead of time. I just bypassed the line, that’s all. Now we have more time to show Damian around. And there’s lots I want to show him.”

 

—

 

Their first stop on Dick’s VIP tour is the animal tent. Dick’s known the animal tamers, and most of the animals, since he was a baby, and they’re all overjoyed to see him again.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Bruce says as they stand in front of the tiger cage. He’s not even sure how this is  _allowed_. He looks around at the busy animal tamers, all bustling around trying to catch up on their show preparations after all the time they spent hugging Dick and reminiscing with him. None of them seem to care about stopping Dick from petting the animal through the bars.

“No need to worry, Bruce. This girl’s totally tame. She’s just a big housecat. And we’re old friends. Aren’t we?” Dick asks the tiger. She looks up at him blearily and then goes back to sleep, resting her head on her paws. “See? She likes me.”

Reluctantly, Bruce hands Damian over to Dick, if only because the toddler is squirming so much to get closer to the big cat that Bruce can barely hold onto him. Damian’s face is full of awe as he watches the tiger. That expression only grows when Dick takes the toddler’s small hand and pats it against the tiger’s striped fur. The creature doesn’t even seem to notice—she just keeps dozing—but Bruce is wary all the same. 

“All right, that’s enough,” he says after a few seconds

“But, B—” Dick protests. 

“I said  _enough_.”

“Fine, fine.” Dick’s pout matches Damian’s as he steps away from the cage. “There’s just one more person I need to introduce Damian to.”

He leads them to the far side of the tent, past and monkeys and colourful poodles and more tigers, all the way to the elephant pens. As soon as he’s close enough, a grey trunk snakes out and slides around his shoulders. The elephant it’s attached to lets out a happy rumbling noise.

“Hey, I-I’m glad you still remember me.” There’s a crack in Dick’s voice, and his eyes shine with tears that he blinks away quickly. He lifts Damian up higher so the boy can get a closer look at the elephant, and vice versa. “Damian, this is Zitka, one of my very best friends from the circus. Zitka, this is my new baby brother.”

The elephant lets out another soft rumble and taps Damian on the head with her trunk in a friendly manner, then winds it around his waist like a hug.

“Careful—” Bruce starts to warn, but Dick waves off his concern flippantly.

“Calm down, Bruce. She’s only saying hello.”

“Just make sure you don’t let go of him,” Bruce insists. Elephants don’t know the right way to hold children. Damian might get dropped.

One of the animal tamers asks Bruce and Dick to leave so they can finish the preparations for showtime. But she urges Dick to come back after the show, to stop by their trailers for dinner so they can all finish catching up, and Dick agrees cheerfully.

“Mine,” says Damian as the three of them are about to leave, hugging Zitka’s trunk possessively.

Dick winces in dread. “No, Damian,” he starts to explain calmly. “You can’t—”

“ _Mine_.” Damian’s face starts to turn red, and Bruce knows all too well what comes next. He wonders if he can fit an elephant in the manor.

 

—

The only way they manage to get Damian out of the animal tent without a crisis is with the promise of candy—luckily cotton candy doesn’t require many teeth to eat. His hands and face are sticky and blue, but he’s content as he sucks the sugary goo off his fingers. 

Damian’s happy now, but Dick is frowning, looking a bit perturbed, a bit uncertain.

“Is something wrong?” asks Bruce in a low voice, glancing around, his suspicions heightened. Villains are drawn to events like these like moths to flame, and if Dick’s noticing something strange…

“What?” Dick snaps out of his trance. “Oh… no, it’s fine. I just, um, don’t really know anyone working around here. Guess it’s been too long since…” His voice trails off and he keeps craning on his tiptoes and scanning the crowd like someone adrift searching for an anchor. “C’mon, let’s keep walking.”

They don’t get far before Damian begins to fuss and whimper.

“What is it, Damian?” asks Bruce, but Damian just keeps whining and fighting against the straps holding him in the stroller.

“You gotta use your words, little D,” Dick urges.

“Kitty,” the toddler blurts out demandingly.

“Kitty? Where? Oh—” Dick follows Damian’s pointing finger to the stuffed animal hanging in a game booth. “ _That_  kitty.”

It’s an odd-looking toy, a little misshapen with an unnerving cheshire grin, and covered with multicoloured spots. Bruce isn’t entirely sure what sort of cat it’s supposed to be. Possibly a jaguar. Damian has much better toys at home, and lots of them, but right now he’s whining and his hands are reaching and he’s making it clear that his heart is set on that one. Unless they want a tantrum on their hands, they aren’t leaving here without winning that toy.

The game is some kind of frisbee toss, throwing the discs into target slots for points. It looks simple enough. Dick’s mood lifts immediately when he sees the ponytailed man working there, somebody he must recognize.

Bruce searches his wallet for small bills while Dick’s catching up on old times. The man tousles Dick’s hair. Everyone else Dick knows has done the same, and by now his hair is a mess, sticking up in all directions. But he’s too pleased to care.

“How much for a game?” asks Bruce.

“Three bucks,” says the worker.

Dick’s grin widens, his eyes shining deviously. “Donny, you know who this is, right? He’s Bruce Wayne. Mr Big-Bucks himself. I think he can afford a more premium rate, know what I’m saying?”

The man chews his gum thoughtfully. “Yeah, Dickie, I know  _exactly_  what you’re sayin’. And I think you’re right.”

“You heard the man, Brucie.” Dick nudges him with his elbow. “Better cough up.”

Rolling his eyes, Bruce fishes out another bill and gives it to the man. “Just tell me how many points I need for the cat.”

“‘Bout seventy-five. But for you, Mr Wayne… a hundred.”

“Better make that one-twenty-five,” Dick suggests.

“A hundred twenty-five it is,” Donny agrees heartily, handing Bruce five plastic discs. “And good luck to you, Mr Wayne.”

Bruce weighs the discs in his hand, getting a feel for the shape and size. First he takes a test shot, aiming at the twenty-five point slot. It goes in, and now that he’s gauged the spin and drag of the discs he’s confident enough to try for fifty-point slot, the smallest one at the very top. He makes the target easily. Twice.

No luck, just skill.

“That’s one hundred and twenty-five points,” he says, handing the last two discs back. Dick is smirking at him.

And soon Damian is holding the stuffed cat happily in his hands, smearing it with sticky blue sugar. Another tantrum averted.

“You’re pretty handy with those things,” the man in the booth tells Bruce, impressed. Possibly a little annoyed. “You played this game before?”

Bruce shrugs. “Something like that,” he says airily, like the clueless billionaire playboy he’s supposed to be.

Those frisbees aren’t so different from batarangs, after all.

 

—

 

Dick slips away to buy them some food—apparently they  _must_  try the pretzels—leaving Bruce and Damian to wander the midway.

Bruce is steering Damian’s stroller to get them a better view of a performer juggling in the middle of a small crowd, when he’s suddenly aware of the feeling that someone is watching him, just behind his back. He turns to look. 

The powder-white face and the red-lipped grin make his hands curl into fists. His shoulders tense and he twitches as he fights the impulse to  _punch_.

It’s just a clown. An innocent,  _non_ -homicidal circus clown. His hair is red instead of green and he’s much shorter than the Joker.

Bruce tries to arrange his face into something pleasant and mild but it’s too late, the clown’s already seen the dark, threatening glower. He looks rather taken aback, even frightened, but he recovers quickly and slaps on a merry grin, offering Damian a balloon.

Damian hisses and bares his teeth, all six of them. That’s always a foreboding sign. Bruce grabs the balloon in his stead and makes a hasty retreat, relieved when a group of excited children run to gather around the clown, providing cover. He keeps an eye out and keeps his distance from any other clowns. There are a lot of them in this part of the midway, and Bruce feels edgy, agitated. He feels surrounded.

Once they’ve reached a clown-free area and Bruce is starting to feel more at ease, they meet up with Dick, who’s struggling valiantly to carry the pretzels and drinks without spilling anything. He spots the balloon and perks up. “You saw a clown? Which one? Where?”

“I don’t remember. Somewhere back by the game booths.” Bruce waves his hand in a vague direction and starts pushing the stroller toward the main tent before Dick tries to drag him to find the clowns. He’d rather not go through that again. “We should go find our seats. The show must be starting soon.”

 

—

 

The seats are fantastic, close enough that they don’t have to squint to make out the performers but just far enough that they’ll be able to see all the acts—even the trapeze artists—without craning their necks. But Dick is the one who reserved the seats, after all, so Bruce had no doubt.

It’s still a few minutes until showtime. The seats are packed, the noise from the crowd deafening as hundreds of voices chatter excitedly. Dick is tapping his finger on his knee in anticipation.

“Pop Haly asked me if I wanted to do a few flips on the trapeze earlier, during warm-up,” says Dick, looking up at the ropes and swings strung from the ceiling. There’s an expression on his face that speaks more of yearning than trepidation. “Just for fun, y’know? There’d be a net, because of liability stuff—I’m not actually one of their performers—but…”

“Dick, not in—”

“Not in Gotham, I know,” he agrees. “Too many Batman and Robin fans around here, right?” Dick shrugs and smiles wryly. “S’okay, I guess we’ll just have to take a trip to Metropolis in a couple weeks to see the circus again.” 

“I think Damian will like that,” Bruce says, because he does think Damian’s enjoyed the circus so far, even before the show has started. 

The boy is sitting on his lap, staring with intense focus at the colours and lights below, completely entranced. He keeps making small, fussy noises that get louder and louder the longer they sit and wait. He probably isn’t pleased that he has to sit up here, and isn’t allowed down there. Or perhaps he’s just restless from the sugar rush—he’s eaten a lot of cotton candy tonight. Alfred isn’t going to be happy.

“Hey, I could even take Damian up on the trapeze with me!” says Dick. “We have that harness carrier for him, I could just strap that on and—”

“That isn’t not going to happen,” Bruce says flatly.

“That’s basically how  _I_  learned. It’s totally safe.”

“Maybe when he’s older.”  _Maybe_.

Dick looks at his little brother and points up at the trapeze rigging. “What do you say, little D? Wanna learn how to fly?”

Damian stops chewing on the ear of his new stuffed animal. “ _Buh_ ,” he says, reaching up to the ceiling, mimicking Dick. His small hand opens and closes, like he’s trying to grab what he sees.

Dick beams. Bruce tries to frown. And before any of them can say anything more, the lights in the audience dim and music proclaims the beginning of the show.


End file.
